Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

"I think you made it stronger!" Madeleine gasped, as she was again slammed backward into the wall, not daring to cushion with a shield in case it bounced her forward. Unable to stand the weight, she pushed out with the front shield, glad she’d put a lot of practice into not paralysing herself, and took a relieved breath when she succeeded in jolting the glow-monster a few feet away.

"If shields cause rebound when struck quickly, move in slow," Fisher said rapidly.

"Surround it and all press in," Noi agreed.

"Nash, come when we have it pinned," Fisher added, and Madeleine couldn’t understand why, but had to focus on keeping her shield up as the glow-monster came at her again.

It seemed to be trying to knock her to the ground and with its increased strength Madeleine was not only being pushed into the wall, but she could feel the glow-monster getting closer, making gradual progress through her shield.

"Set your feet," Min warned, and then rocked backward as his attempt to pin the thing’s tail was only partially successful.

Nash ran up. Madeleine still hadn’t understood what he was expected to do, since, while he could shield and punch a little, he was vastly weaker, and tended to collapse almost immediately. He couldn’t use the precious energy he drew from them to fight.

But that, of course, was the answer, and Nash had thought through Fisher’s reasoning quicker than Madeleine. Squeezing between Noi and Pan, he set both hands to the thing’s heaving side.

The reaction was immediate: frantic thrashing threatening to hurl them in every direction. Fisher and Pan, the weakest among them, stumbled, but pressed in again.

"Hold firm," Noi gasped as the thing’s howling cry scaled up to painful intensity, enough to make them want to stop everything in favour of covering ears.

"Too much." Nash was blazing, his palms and the stars which covered the back of his neck burning pinpoints.

"Vent," Fisher told him tersely. "Go outside and punch over the water."

Nash ran, the necessity of re-opening the garage door slowing him down. But once he was out, he had a clear shot east.

"Hurry!" Pan called, as the glow-monster heaved back from Madeleine, trying to escape, to push against the weakest shields. Emily and Min fell, and the tail lashed, swiping Fisher, who ricocheted into the nearest car, and Madeleine gasped aloud, but saw he’d managed to shield himself against the impact.

Noi and Pan dived on the tail, pinning it to the ground between them, but they weren’t usefully braced. They’d been able to keep it in place when it had her against the wall and they’d surrounded it and pushed in, but now that it was loose there was no way any of them could hold it without being knocked away.

"Push down on it and use another shield against the ceiling!" Min was already attempting to put his words into action, but it was definitely something easier said than done. With a startled shout, he ended up bouncing sideways, and water began spraying from the fire sprinklers.

Not trusting herself with such a difficult manoeuvre, Madeleine ran for Nash, barely beating the glow-monster’s attempt to run right over him. With no time for explanations, she simply spun and shield-punched the thing toward the car with the Pan-sized dint in its side, the impact catapulting her backward.

"Pin it! Pin it!" Pan ran forward, and the others joined him, holding the creature against the car so Nash could risk approaching. Madeleine ran to join them, keeping it still as it frantically tried to escape Nash’s touch.

It collapsed.

The transition was so swift that most of them went down with it, falling to puffing heaps around a thing which now glowed no more than a paper lantern. A lantern the size of a small car.

"Is – is it properly dead?" Emily whispered.

"I think so." Nash, stars bright, pressed his hand against the thing’s neck, then started back when his fingers sank into the glowing surface. "It doesn’t have – it’s like it’s turned to mud. Less than that. Fog."

"It looks like a dead jellyfish," Pan said. "Which is a step down from the mermaid called Rover thing it started with." He grimaced, and wiped at the water running into his eyes. "We beat one of these things. We know now that we can fight back. Why the hell aren’t I cheering?"

"We don’t even know what this is," Min pointed out. "Our problem is the Moths. Whole different ball game."

"It’s familiar in an odd way," Madeleine said. "I know I’ve never seen it before, but I felt like I had."

"The balls with ears from the first challenge," Noi said, using Pan’s shoulder to lever herself to her feet. "Come on, we can’t just sit here in a puddle. Nash, go see if you can spot anyone coming down the wharf. Everyone else, there have to be controls to shut these sprinklers off."

Fisher, next to his feet, held a hand down for Madeleine, and waited to check she could stay up. Then they paused to stare at the thing they’d just killed. It did remind Madeleine a little of the targets from the Manila challenge, but a car-sized doggy mermaid was a long way from a soccer ball with ears and paws. Related species? Parent? She puzzled over it while they hunted for a way to shut down the broken sprinkler system without cutting off water to the entire building.

"No sign of any movement on either side," Nash said, jogging back to the garage entrance just as they succeeded in stopping the flow. "Why alone? It seemed to know where we were."

"Maybe it’s some kind of Blue tracker," Min suggested. "Able to smell us or hear us or something."

"Doesn’t explain why they’d let it gallop off to leap on us alone," Noi said, then shivered and shook her head, a few drops of water spraying from damp curls. "Speculate later. Right now we have a big glowing corpse, no obvious Moths, and a huge decision."

"Stay or leave." Fisher said.

"At sunset, while cold and wet. When the only one of us not exhausted is Nash." Noi ticked the obstacles off. "Not necessarily insurmountable. We’ve talked about Goat Island as a possibility. We have boats and have downloaded harbour charts, and it’s a straightforward enough trip. We could probably get there in the dark without running into anything. But for all we know Goat Island is where they keep their flying snake, so condition unknown. And it’s one of the few largish islands in the harbour, so a bit obvious as a hiding place. That’s the question of leaving – what about staying?"

"The gamble is whether they have another Rover," Min said. "If, that is, the thing really could track us. They obviously haven’t been able to before now, or our pyjama party would have been over days ago. If we’re to believe the internet chatter, the Moths don’t know when Blues are hiding nearby. This building has been cleared already, and the hidden room and webcams are seriously hard to give up, so long as we think this Rover is the only Rover. The problem with staying is that." He nodded at the corpse, large and obvious in the fading light. "We could risk using the garage because it’s dim and sheltered and there’s little chance anyone will go in it to notice any damage. The glow from that thing is a neon sign marking the start point of any hunt."

"Staying or leaving, we need to get rid of it," Fisher said.

"True enough." Noi’s stomach growled, announcing another issue they needed to deal with, and soon. "Right. Fisher, grab the laptop and see if you can dig up any other sightings of Rovers. Nash, Pan, take lookout either side. We’ll try to push it into the water."

The yielding, insubstantial mass would only shift when thumped with a shield, and by the time they had knocked it out of the garage and then chivvied it to the navy base side of the wharf, all Madeleine could think of was food and rest.